Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

It struck Brad then that, if anything, intelligence was Quinton’s Achilles’ heel. If there was anything he might respond to besides force, which Brad wasn’t in any position to leverage, it would be reason. Quinton’s variety of reason.

But at the moment, Brad’s own mind wasn’t able to engage the man on such a level. He couldn’t shake the image of Paradise back at the center at this very moment, shaking in her room. That this beast would take such a pure, innocent woman only just discovering herself in a dark world and subject her to horror after all she’d been through…

Nausea rolled through his stomach. He swallowed again and tried to focus. He had to keep Quinton talking. He had to move him down a path, any path, that might lead to distraction.

“I don’t want you to hurt Paradise,” he said. “She’s just a pawn to you. Why take another innocent life?”

“None of them is innocent. And he’s still chosen them, despite that. Get your theology straight, Mr. Raines.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that. But was Nikki’s mother chosen? Were the two policemen you killed? Am I? Is Paradise? You don’t have to kill others.”

Quinton looked at him with fascination. “That’s what Nikki said. She was begging for her own life. But you’re begging for Paradise, aren’t you? For her life.”

“She’s…” His chest swelled with emotion, choking off his words. “Please, she’s done nothing to deserve this. For the love of God, she’s…”

“For the love of God, Brad? Not for your love? Do you love her?”

Looking into the man’s eyes, Brad saw a darkness that made him want to turn his head away, a deep evil that had fooled itself into thinking it knew what it could not know. Yet here from behind this dark stare came the question that had battered his own mind.

“Love?” Brad asked. “What’s love?”

“You don’t know what love is?” Quinton said. “Then you don’t have the right to speak to me about it.”

“Of course I know what love is…”

“Then tell me, do you love her? Or are you embarrassed by her? She’s an idiot in your small world. You throw people like her in the garbage.”

The accusation bared a strip of raw emotion that surprised Brad. “No, don’t say that.”

“Then why aren’t you in love with her?”

Because he couldn’t be! How could he love someone who…

Brad closed his eyes and bore down on the conflicting emotions. The man had turned the tables on him in a matter of minutes, throwing him into a defensive posture that gave Quinton the power. He had to turn this back around.

He looked back up at Quinton. “You win. The truth is I think I do love her.”

“You love Paradise.” His tone was mocking, unconvinced.

It was odd, sitting here tied to a post, debating with himself about his love for a woman. But at the moment there was nothing more important.

“I think so, yes.”

Quinton stared at him for several beats, then walked up, pulled him roughly to his feet, and, holding his collar with his left hand, slapped him hard across his jaw with his right hand.

Brad’s head snapped back. Pain flashed up his jaw.

Sweat covered the man’s face and it twitched. “God loves her. You don’t. Get that straight.” Quinton released him.

He left Brad standing and walked to a table on which lay a single suitcase. He opened the case and pulled out a blue drill with a battery pack. He squeezed the trigger once, ran it up to full speed, then let go of the trigger and set it down. He pulled out a plastic housing that held silver drill bits and carefully set it beside the drill.

A tin bucket sat at the end of the table.

Brad knew he had to keep the man talking. Distract him. The post behind him was only four inches thick and moved with his weight-how would it respond if he threw his weight back against it? How long had it stood here, rotting?

“So, you’re using me as bait,” Brad said, “to lure in your bait for Angel.”

The man spoke without turning. “If only it were that simple. These are complicated matters, Mr. Raines. God, the devil, all that fighting going on in the sky. But this is a love story. Love stories are never without their complications. The fights, the betrayal, the crying… It’s all part of the plan. Including you, the twisted man who doesn’t know how to love a woman. It’s a good thing God doesn’t have that problem.”

Brad wanted to say something. He knew he had to engage the man and talk him down, plant a seed of doubt, earn the upper hand, throw him off. The problem was, he was thrown off himself.

The killer had been the one to plant a seed of doubt, this gnawing question about love. Why hadn’t he been able to love, really love, since Ruby had taken her life?

Because he was fearful, not for himself, but for the woman he might love. When Paradise had said as much yesterday, he’d fallen apart right there on the bench. But not because she was right.

Because she was wrong! He wasn’t that noble. If they knew what he was really like… The FBI, his co-workers, the waitresses at the bars he favored, the women he dated. If they only knew how focused he was on protecting not them but himself, how bothered he was by the failings of others because his standards were so high, how unlikable he was, stripped of all his charms and his quick mind and his face.

If they only knew…

He couldn’t love Paradise because she would learn just how unlovable he was. And because she couldn’t possibly live up to his standards, which was what made him so unlovable.

The realization had crushed him because he knew that as much as he couldn’t love Paradise for these reasons, deep inside he wanted to love her. He wanted to burn all of his standards. Stamp on them together with Paradise as they smoldered. Take her in his arms, far away from everything that had molded him into this monster who required a woman to look and speak and think in a way that met his lofty expectations.

Standing here now, tied to the post, his feelings of shame and desire returned. But with them a very simple thought came to him.

What he’d just said was true. He did love her.

Brad blinked. Why not? Why didn’t he love her?

He was only pretending that he couldn’t love her in order to protect himself. In reality, under all the foolishness that made him so pathetic, he did love her. And maybe, just maybe, he could win her love as well.

His pulse surged, beating now like a pump desperate for more blood so that it could stay alive. Quinton was laying out his tools, preparing to ruin a life because he thought it was the right thing to do, and Brad stood behind him, thinking he had to save this one life, Paradise, who had inadvertently wandered into the killer’s crossfire, a pawn to draw in his seventh victim.

Saving Paradise was suddenly the only thing that mattered to him.

Allison’s words whispered through his mind. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s actually killing God’s favorites. He’s got it backward, you see? He’s not an angel, he’s the devil. Someone needs to correct his thinking.

“They say you’re delusional,” he said, “that you are mentally ill and suffer from delusions of grandeur. That you think God speaks to you because you’re psychotic. But they’re wrong, aren’t they?”

Quinton set a bottle of fingernail polish next to three others he’d lined up. Everything in perfect order.

“You don’t need to worry, Mr. Raines. I’ve decided not to kill you.” He turned around. “And don’t try to patronize me or use your intelligence to talk me down. I’ve been over this before and I know exactly who I am.”

“You do, I can see that now. But you don’t know who I am.”

“You’re Special Agent Brad Raines. You’ve been trying to find and stop me for a long time.”